AUSIN-002 - museum specimen
Cairns and Mulgrave Periperipo BM Oc1900-0723-46
Australia - North Queensland
Function not recorded
Periperipo English
Periperipo: the local name recorded in the Mulgrave River region for the bullroarer.
A wooden bullroarer, long oval with slightly convex sides, painted red and black and pierced at one end for a cord. It was collected in the Mulgrave River region near Cairns and bought by the British Museum in 1900 from the dealers Rollin & Feuardent, the field collector being W. Charles Handley. The register names it plainly as "Mulgrave blacks. Periperipo or bull roarer," Periperipo being the local name recorded for the object. A second, larger Mulgrave example from the same lot, also red and black, was shown in London at the Museum of Mankind's 1972–82 exhibition "The Aborigines of Australia." The Pitt Rivers Museum holds three more bullroarers from Freshwater, on the northern edge of Cairns, bought in 1936 from the dealer A. W. F. Fuller: the smallest carries its own recorded name, Birr-Birrah, and the museum's register titles all three simply "secret-sacred object."
Mulgrave blacks. Periperipo or bull roarer
British Museum register, object Oc1900,0723.46
- Object
- Wood bullroarer from Mulgrave or Cairns locality in British Museum collection
- Function
- Named object anchor for Cairns-Mulgrave area
- Map confidence
- high - Mulgrave River and Gordonvale area anchor rather than museum exact point
- Source location
Page references
British Museum object record Oc1900-0723-46; register slip names Mulgrave Blacks and Periperipo